Established in 2006, Spring House Brewing Company operates three locations around Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. All three locations have restaurants and a full bar service. Their beers are distributed in Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

“We love to brew traditional beers with quality as well as experiment with fun, new styles of beer,” said Victoria Vacanti, general manager for Spring House Brewing Company.

Spring House has a strong interest in supporting their local community and has built partnerships with a number of non-profit organizations in a variety of ways to help raise funds and awareness to their causes.

Blending Bases

Affordable Love is an Imperial Stout that’s blended with an aged Stout base. “We like to keep a stock of generic Imperial Stout to blend into barrels and other releases,” said Vacanti. For Affordable Love, Spring House took all of the stock stout they had, which was just over a year old, and blended it into a fresh beer brewed just for this release.

Vacanti explained that the aged beer is about 1/3 of the total volume of the beer. Spring House set some of this blend behind as well, so their next Imperial Stout release will have an even more complex blend.

Affordable Love doesn’t contain any adjuncts. What you taste with this beer is a pure Russian Imperial Stout blended with their stock reserve.

Affordable Love

Spring House has a monthly beer release which features original artwork on the cans. We’re a little behind here, but Affordable Love was January’s release featuring Steven Godfrey’s photograph of the “Affordable Love” kiosk outside of Pittsburgh.

The kiosk no longer exists leaving much mystery surrounding what was actually sold from there. “We love the art series because it allows us to showcase art from artists looking to gain exposure and build a community of creative mind,” said Vacanti. This also allows their brewers to craft and experiment with new beer recipes.

The Flavor!

Affordable Love is a remarkable Russian Imperial Stout, one of the best we’ve had the privilege of trying in recent memory.

Subtle notes of rich milk chocolate caress your palate upon first sip. This velvety smooth stout awakens the taste buds and will have them clamoring for more. After the initial milk chocolate, you start to get the bitter, yet sweet and twisty notes of espresso, ending with a hint of cocoa.

All the flavors together are simple, yet complex at the same time. Affordable Love produces a somewhat thick and slightly creamy mouthfeel that just adds to the overall profile of the beer. We think Spring House knocked this one out of the park.

Conclusion

While we know there are other Stouts out there in the market that could be just as good, we think you would be hard-pressed to find a better one.

Since Spring House saves their bases and blends them with future beers, we highly recommend you check them out and see and experience for yourself!

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